It seems like it was just weeks ago that the left complained bitterly about Condi Rice as a choice for Secretary of State. They couldn't argue that she was in any way unfit or unqualified, so they made do with this criticism: she agree with Bush on most things. It would be better to have a cabinet full of people you can't get along with, so this thinking goes, so they will challenge you and raise difficult questions. Consider this from the Roanoke Times and World News, 11/17/04:
As his national security adviser, Rice is noted for her extraordinarily close relationship with Bush and has been finely in tune with his thinking. Her nomination to head the State Department can hardly come as a surprise: Harmony with his own views is a high value for a president who likes to surround himself with people who make him feel comfortable. But like-mindedness does not necessarily serve him or the country well.
Now that John Bolton has been nominated by Bush as our representative to the U.N., it suddenly seems as if challenge and disagreement are bad things. See the New York Times. Maybe Bolton is in harmony with the President's views, and maybe not. But his job will be to talk to the UN.
One would have thought that an institution as corrupt as the U.N., with the multi-billion dollar food for oil scandal, and the current sex for pretty much everything scandal, that someone skeptical of international pieties would be just the thing. See Anne Applebaum's piece in the Washington Post.
For the record, let me begin by repeating a few quotes from John Bolton, newly nominated as ambassador to the United Nations, just so that no one can accuse me of naivete. He has said, "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." He has said that "wishful thinking about the United Nations . . . ran into a wall of reality in Kosovo." He has been skeptical of U.N. peacekeeping operations, skeptical of the U.S. obligation to pay its U.N. dues, skeptical of just about everything, really, to do with the United Nations.
All of which makes him an ideal candidate to be America's U.N. ambassador.
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